Congressional Republicans have been arguing of late that President Obama has precious little authority of his own on most issues of governance — immigration, for example. Most GOP lawmakers theorize that there isn’t much the president can do without explicit directions from Congress. And now that argument likely will be put to another test with regard to changing relations between the United States and Cuba. HERE‘s the situation: President Obama will move as soon as next month to defang the 54-year-old American trade embargo...

Ezra Klein, one of our better political pundits, ARGUES that “presidential overreach is party a response to congressional dysfunction”: Just as Congress is too divided to do anything; it’s also too divided to stop the other parts of government from doing something. Congress can’t pass a law solving the immigration crisis but it also can’t pass a law stopping Obama from trying to solve it. It can’t pass a law regulating carbon emissions but it also can’t pass a law stopping the Environmental...

As things stand now, the consensus among the political cognoscenti is that Republicans likely will make at least a few gains in this year’s mid-term elections. But THIS suggests to me that Democrats might hold their own if they play their cards right: The number of Americans who approve of their own representative in Congress has reached an all-time low, according to a poll released Tuesday. In a Washington Post-ABC News poll, 51 percent of Americans said that they disapprove of the way their member of Congress is “handling his or her...

President Obama’s favorability ratings among Americans in general are nothing to write home about, but they’re not nearly as bad as those for Congress, where obstructionist Republicans hold sway. And now Obama suddenly seems willing to get snarky in his public expressions of impatience with the GOPers on the Hill, as we see HERE: From the Rose Garden to the Cabinet Room to near the Key Bridge in Georgetown, the president has signaled more than mere annoyance at the state of affairs at the halfway point of this year. His disdain...

This isn’t the way democracy is supposed to work. No matter how you may feel about whether an increase in the federal minimum wage is a good idea or not, one overriding fact pertains: Republican leaders in the House of Representatives refuse to allow a vote on the matter. Why? The answer is obvious: They’re afraid it will pass. In fact, Republicans in both houses of Congress are afraid of almost every bill that comes down the pike. Consequently, their only course of action is obstruction. If a bill the Republicans don’t like...